From The Oregonian of Thursday, April 21, 1988 -- Week spotlights crime victims' rights: A victim testifies against a defendant, but the family lives in fear of what might happen if the man is released from prison

From The Oregonian of Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 -- DA, victim fight to keep rapist locked up: Multnomah County prosecutors take the rare step of suing the state board for opting to free a man they say is still a threat

A 60-year prison term lies ahead for Richard T. Gillmore, 28, the would-be policeman who broke into a Gresham house and raped a 13-year-old girl Dec. 5, 1986.

Circuit Judge Richard L. Unis on Friday sentenced Gillmore to 30 years, the maximum provided by law for rape, with a minimum of 15 years before parole. He also sentenced Gillmore to 30 years, the maximum for burglary, with a minimum of 15 years behind bars.

Unis also ordered two five-year terms on two sex abuse counts but ordered that they be served at the same time as the rape term.

The judge further ordered that Gillmore be given an opportunity to enroll in the sex offender program at the penitentiary.

Lawyers explained that a person is guilty of burglary when he breaks into a home to commit another crime.

Unis said Gillmore has a ``severe personality disorder with a propensity toward dangerous criminal acts,'' accepting the testimony of three psychiatrists.

He also called Gillmore ``somewhat a Jekyll and Hyde,'' pointing out that he had sought work as a policeman and made his neighbors who worked in law enforcement think he was qualified for such work.

The judge said the ``safety of women would be jeopardized'' if Gillmore were not behind bars.

``What took place that we know of was even worse than taking a life in some respects,'' Unis said. ``For eight years this man inflicted harm that made life unbearable for these people.

``From age 14 on, you have been a force out of control,'' he told the defendant.

The judge said he was considering six rape cases and one rape attempt that Gillmore committed too long ago to be prosecuted under the statute of limitations.

Before the sentence was handed down, the victim said from the witness stand that her life had been changed. She now fears being alone, and Gillmore ``took away my freedom,'' she said.

Her father, his voice breaking, vowed that when Gillmore is freed and gets work he will get some of the earnings for his daughter or a trust fund for other rape victims.

Unis let them testify under the ``victims' bill of rights'' adopted by the voters last November. It became effective one day before the girl was raped.

Gillmore himself said, ``I'm very sorry. I've caused a lot of pain for a lot of people. I've changed.''

His lawyer, Des Connall, argued that only one offense had been committed -- rape -- and that the maximum term under the law should be 20 years. He asked for probation and sex offender treatment for Gillmore under the state Mental Health Division -- at the Oregon State Hospital.

Gillmore had applied for work as a Gresham policeman before the rape case. After the first examination he was 97th on the eligibility list, from which 25 were hired July l, but after others were screened he became 70th. Detectives were doing background investigations on No. 40 at the time.

He was trapped partly by fingerprints taken in connection with his application and compared with a fingerprint on a light bulb that had been unscrewed by a rapist in a case too old to be prosecuted.

All three psychiatrists -- Drs. Glenn D. Fraser, David McGourty and Michael E. Colpach -- testified that Gillmore had a ``severe personality disorder.'' They said he should be treated as a sex offender but warned that nobody can forecast whether a specific person will be rehabilitated under the program.

A neighbor, the Rev. Duane L. Stixrud, said Gillmore had changed completely in the past few months.

``The Rich who is here is not the Rich I knew four years ago or one year ago,'' he said. ``Several months ago, he found the Lord. Now he wants to work for others' welfare.''

Gillmore, who lived at 2502 S.W. Indian Mary Court in Troutdale, was arrested Dec. 19. In his penitentiary term, he will get credit for the 10 months he has been in jail.

From The Oregonian of Thursday, April 21, 1988 -- Week spotlights crime victims' rights: A victim testifies against a defendant, but the family lives in fear of what might happen if the man is released from prison
By Paul Koberstein

It's evening, Dec. 6, 1986. Rebecca Edens' 13-year-old daughter is doing housework in her kitchen. The stereo goes dead. A man, holding a blanket to his face and chest, rushes toward her. They struggle, but the man throws her to the dining room carpet . . .

Five months later, the girl confronted her attacker in court. Richard Troy Gillmore, 32, was found guilty of first degree burglary and rape. And later at sentencing, the girl, now 15, spoke before the court.

"I told them I hope this doesn't happen to any other children or women," she said. "The only way it won't happen is if the state locks up criminals forever."

The Oregon Crime Victims Bill of Rights went into effect the day before Rebecca Edens' daughter was raped. It gave the girl the right to stand up in court and plead for a stiff sentence.

She told the court:

"On that night when he raped me, he took away my freedom, my mom's freedom and . . . I was a virgin, and he took that away from me, too."

This week is National Victims' Rights Week. Cases such as the Gillmore trial serve as examples of victims exercising their right to plead for justice and to express deep feelings, said Multnomah County District Judge Kim Frankel.

A statement in court can go a long way toward helping someone recover from an attack, Frankel said.

"Somebody's got to listen to you, to listen to the less tangible things, how your life has been changed," she said.

Frankel will moderate a panel discussion Thursday night on the law, what it is like to be a crime victim and support systems available for victims. The discussion starts at 7 p.m. in the Central Library in Room B on the first floor.

Rebecca Edens, 38, an employee of First Interstate Bank, considers herself a victim of the crime against her daughter. The new law considers her a victim as well because she is the parent of a minor who was raped. Until the law was passed, courts kept crime victims in the hallways if they were scheduled to testify. Now, victims can sit in the front row and, at sentencing, make a statement if they wish.

Edens was a witness in the case. She came home from work shortly after the attack and saw police cars outside her home. She rushed in and surveyed the crime scene, which she later described in court. If her daughter had been attacked on Dec. 4 instead of Dec. 6, she would have been locked out of most of her daughter's trial.

And she would not have been happy about it.

"I would have screamed, I would have been smoking, I would have been in jail," she said.

Edens and her daughter plan to speak at a parole hearing for Gillmore in May - another new right for crime victims. Edens said they would tell the board not to let Gillmore out, ever. So long as there's a chance Gillmore will find freedom, she believes their lives face a threat. But fear in the Edens' home hasn't subsided with Gillmore's incarceration.

"My electric bill is atrocious; I leave the lights on all the time," Edens said. "I bought a guard dog and an alarm system. And even with the lights and the dog, I'll walk around the house with a knife. I get this feeling I'm not safe."

What happened to the Edens will happen to one out of four American families this year, according to a national crime victims' group, the Sunny von Bulow National Victim Advocacy Center.

They want more victims' statements at sentencings, more statements at parole hearings and a more liberal use of the death penalty.

Victims are not in short supply. Marilyn Culp, director of the Multnomah County victims assistance program, said her office handles up to 1,500 new cases a month, ranging from purse-snatching to homicide. Many of these cases wind up in court, where she said the balance of justice has now tilted slightly toward victims.

Norman Frink Jr., deputy Multnomah County district attorney, said his office could handle 8,000 cases this year, up from just 4,600 in 1985.

Frink said that although the new law has given a sense of fairness to court proceedings -from the victim's point of view - the victims' rights bill "will never be fully effective" until there is enough prison space.

"It's great that you can go down to talk to the parole board," he said. "But it's not going to have a great deal of impact until the parole board has someplace to put people."

Culp, Frink and Bob Kouns of Crime Victims United, a local crime-victims assistance group, also will speak at the Thursday night panel discussion.

From The Oregonian of Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2007 -- Rapist's January release upsets and perplexes victim, officials: The parole board says the man can be monitored in the community
By Catherine Trevison

A rapist who once applied to be a Gresham police officer will be released from prison in January, despite angry opposition from people who thought he would be behind bars until at least 2016.

Richard T. Gillmore's release by the Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision is "a travesty," said Gresham Police Chief Carla Piluso, who worked on the case of "the jogging rapist" briefly in 1986 when she was a patrol officer. "Logically, the best place for this person to be is in prison."

The Multnomah County prosecutor who tried Gillmore's case in 1987 agreed. Releasing Gillmore into the community is comparable to putting "a monster on the loose," Senior Deputy District Attorney Russell Ratto told the board during an Oct. 23 hearing.

One of Gillmore's victims, now 34, testified at his parole hearing and believes he is still a danger to society.

"I'm scared. I've got a new German shepherd. I'm getting an alarm system," the woman said Tuesday. "I really feel our community needs to know."

Gillmore, now 48, was originally sentenced to prison for a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years after a 1986 attack in which he broke into a Gresham home and raped the woman, who was then 13.

However, under Oregon law at the time, such sentences were indeterminate. That meant the parole board, not the court, determined the actual length of Gillmore's stay in prison, said new board Executive Director Nancy Sellers.

Gillmore's lengthy sentence came in part because police and prosecutors linked him to several other rapes in the Portland area, Piluso said. Multnomah Circuit Judge Richard Unis said he factored in six previous rapes and one attempted rape Gillmore was suspected of but could not be prosecuted for because they had been committed too long before.

"From age 14 on, you have been a force out of control," Unis told Gillmore.

Unis gave Gillmore a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years on one count of rape and one count of burglary, to be served consecutively. Two five-year sentences for sex abuse were served concurrently.

But a 1988 parole board ruling altered the sentence. The board said one of Unis' 15-year minimum sentences was inappropriate and unnecessary for protecting the public. Sellers on Tuesday said she didn't know the reasoning behind that decision.

After hearings this fall, the board decided Gillmore, though still dangerous, could be adequately controlled with supervision and treatment in the community.

Under those conditions, Oregon law requires the board to give Gillmore a release date, now set at Jan. 18, Sellers said. He will live in Multnomah County and be under strict supervision as a dangerous sex offender until his sentence expires in 2034.

But Gillmore's Gresham victim said she cannot understand the board's conclusion that he can be adequately controlled in the community. The board's deliberations are not public record. The board's decision is final, but the woman said she is considering filing a lawsuit or working to change Oregon law so parole board members are elected rather than appointed by the governor.

If the crime had been committed more recently, a mandatory minimum sentence would apply under Measure 11, Sellers said. However, if Measure 11 had applied at the time, Gillmore would have been released more than seven years ago, Sellers said.

From The Oregonian of Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 -- DA, victim fight to keep rapist locked up: Multnomah County prosecutors take the rare step of suing the state board for opting to free a man they say is still a threat
By Brad Schmidt

In a last-chance attempt to keep a convicted rapist behind bars, the Multnomah County district attorney is joining the rapist's victim in suing the state parole board.

Known as the Jogger Rapist, 48-year-old Richard Troy Gillmore has served 21 years behind bars, long enough to be eligible for release even under today's Measure 11 sentencing rules. But public outcry, and claims the three-person parole board violated state law by failing to notify victims before hearings, has thrust Gillmore's release into a legal tug-of-war.

The case pits a county agency against the state parole board, with a Marion County judge in the middle, and forces the state Department of Justice to defend an agency accused of ignoring victims' rights.

The parole board has been under scrutiny since issuing its decision Oct. 23 to free Gillmore in January, over the objections of the victim and the Multnomah County district attorney, who say he is still dangerous.

Suing the parole board is a first for the district attorney, and it's the only such move by a government agency in at least seven years, lawyers say.

Filed Nov. 21, the two lawsuits argue that the parole board violated state law by failing to notify the victim of a 1988 hearing that made Gillmore eligible for parole about a decade earlier than expected.

The suits also claim the board again failed to notify the victim of a September hearing and that the board opted to release Gillmore without evidence he could be treated.

"We're trying to correct what we think is a gross mistake," Senior Deputy District Attorney Russ Ratto said Monday. "We don't think the parole board had any facts upon which to base this decision. It's a flawed decision."

Nancy Sellers, executive director for the parole board, declined to comment on the case, saying, "It's a matter for litigation now."

Deputy Attorney General Pete Shepherd also declined to comment directly on the lawsuits, but he called it "an ironic case." Under Attorney General Hardy Myers, the office has fought for victims' rights and championed an effort, to be put to voters next year, that would amend the state constitution to ensure victims have a say before criminal sentencing.

The lawsuits against the parole board will be heard Thursday in Marion County Circuit Court, where the parole board is located, rather than Multnomah County, where Gillmore's crimes occurred. The separate but nearly identical lawsuits probably will be combined, lawyers in the case say.

The victim's attorney, Douglas Beloof, claims the board erred in 1988 when it determined the judge's 1987 sentence of at least 30 years in prison was "not necessary to protect the public."

Gillmore was convicted in the Dec. 5, 1986, rape of the victim, who was 13 at the time. In issuing the sentence, the judge also considered six other rapes that police suspected Gillmore of committing but for which he could not be charged because of the statute of limitations.

Two decades later, the parole board on Oct. 23 found that Gillmore "has a mental or emotional disturbance . . ." making him a "danger to the health or safety of others," court documents show. The board decided to release him, stating that Gillmore "can be adequately controlled with supervision and mental health treatment which are available in the community."

Unless a judge postpones the board's decision while considering the lawsuits, Gillmore will be released Jan. 18 with restrictions. He would be required to live in Multnomah County and would be under strict supervision as a dangerous sex offender until his sentence expires in 2034.

Still, his pending release frustrates the victim, now 34 and living in the Portland area.

While she appreciates the effort of the district attorney's office - and Ratto, who prosecuted the case in 1987 - she said she is worried that Gillmore could hurt others.

"I am more disturbed and distraught and livid at how the parole board is conducting themselves," she said. "They are acting as if, 'Well, we don't care what you guys say, he gave a good show, he presented himself well, so we're going to take a risk.'

"I think that is horrible."

From The Oregonian of Saturday, Jan. 12, 2008 -- 'Jogger rapist' will remain in prison: A Marion County judge tells the state parole board to conduct a new hearing
By Ashbel S. Green

A Marion County judge on Friday bowed to a request by a rape victim and blocked the release of a serial rapist a week before he was scheduled to move from prison to a downtown Portland hotel.

Judge Paul J. Lipscomb ordered the state Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision to conduct a new hearing on whether Richard Troy Gillmore, the so-called "jogger rapist" who committed at least nine sexual assaults in the 1970s and 1980s, can be adequately controlled in the community.

Lipscomb also ordered the parole board to give one of Gillmore's victims the right to present evidence against his release.

The decision is a victory for Tiffany Edens, who was 13 when Gillmore raped her in 1986.

"I'm just so relieved," said Edens, who is now 35 and still lives in Multnomah County. "Judge Lipscomb has really shown that victims really do have rights."

The Oregonian has a policy against naming the victims of sexual assault, but Edens wanted to go public:

"I'm hoping this can empower other women."

Lipscomb said he has no authority to second-guess "any ill-advised or mistaken release decision" by the parole board. However, he said the documented concerns that Gillmore is a threat to the community require the board to provide the victim a better opportunity to fight his release.

"In sum, the only available expert evidence documents that Gillmore is even more dangerous and less amenable to be safely managed in the community," the judge said.

In a written statement, parole officials defended the decision to release Gillmore.

"In deciding that Mr. Gillmore could be adequately supervised in the community, the board considered Mr. Gillmore's long record of positive prison conduct and responsible work history, the many classes and treatment programs he has successfully completed, as well as his understanding of his past criminal behavior," the statement said.

Parole officials are considering whether to appeal the order.

Doug Beloof, a Lewis & Clark Law School professor who represented Edens, said the ruling - if it stands - would require the parole board to honor the rights of crime victims to adequately dispute the release of criminals who pose a threat to society.

"What's at stake is the public's safety and the public's reasonable expectation that the government exercise due diligence before it releases a dangerous offender," said Beloof, who is director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute.

Gillmore was convicted of raping Edens in 1986. He admitted to eight other rapes, but the assaults were too old to be prosecuted.

The judge ordered Gillmore to serve at least 30 years in prison, but the parole board in 1988 cut his minimum sentence in half.

At that time, Edens' family had a right to attend the parole hearing, but family members never received notice of the hearing because they left out one "l" in Gillmore's last name on some paperwork.

In 2001, the parole board refused to release Gillmore when he was first eligible because a psychological evaluation said he posed a threat to the community.

The parole board denied him again in 2003 and in 2005.

But last September, the board decided to release Gillmore despite concerns raised in a recent psychological evaluation that he "continued to suffer from a severe personality disorder, one not amenable to community-based treatment or supervision."

Without explanation, parole board member Candace Wheeler said at the hearing: "We have decided that - that we can take a risk with you."

Edens did not receive notice of any of the parole hearings over the years because of another postal mix-up. But by coincidence, she learned of the parole board decision to release Gillmore in late September and demanded a chance to be heard.

The parole board agreed, holding a new hearing in October. Edens testified, but the board stuck to its ruling.

Then in December, Edens and the Multnomah County district attorney's office filed lawsuits seeking to a block his release.

The issues in the suit included the right of Edens to receive adequate notice of the parole hearing. It also demanded that the parole board explain ahead of time its proposed decision so Edens would have the opportunity to dispute it.

In Gillmore's case, for example, there was no evidence in the record to explain why the board changed its position and decided to release him.

In addition, the suits said, the parole board decided to release Gillmore before finding out whether the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice had the resources to protect the public from him.

Beloof said the ruling could force a major overhaul in the way the parole board makes release decisions. Not only will the board have to provide evidence that the release doesn't threaten the community ahead of time, but victims will have a real opportunity to fight the release.

From The Oregonian of Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 -- Fate of prisoners rests with three: Oregon's parole board each year decides whether to free hundreds of inmates
By Ashbel S. Green

SALEM -- Stan Bilinski faced the parole board inside the state penitentiary and explained why he should get out after serving more than 20 years for murder.

"I was living a life of violence, stupidity and making bad choices," said Bilinski, who has spent more than half of his 55 years behind bars.

But therapy, drug treatment and Buddhism changed him.

"I'm committed to the well-being of society now -- help old folks, animal rescue, beach cleanups," he said. "I want to be a law-abiding citizen."

The three-member Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision must decide whether Bilinski is still a threat. It's a critical question because the board will see more than 100 killers, sex offenders and other dangerous inmates seeking release this year.

For years, the parole board has operated with little attention. That changed this month when a Salem judge blocked the release of serial rapist Richard Troy Gillmore because the parole board failed to give a victim a fair chance to argue her side.

The Gillmore case has spurred some prosecutors and victims' advocates to demand reforms that would open the parole board's decision-making process and make it easier to challenge release decisions.

"This may prompt legislation. It may prompt initiatives," said John C. Bradley, special counsel to the Multnomah County district attorney's office.

Lawyer Steven R. Powers worked in the attorney general's office until being selected last year by Gov. Ted Kulongoski to head the parole board. Powers said he intends to make parole hearings more accessible to the public, but the focus would be on inmates who committed serious crimes.

"At the end of the day, it's about public safety," Powers said. "The true focus of the hearing is: Has the offender met the standard for release?"

During his Jan. 16 hearing, Bilinski sat on a brown plastic chair in a closet-size cage that was installed 11 years ago because an inmate pulled two shanks out of his shoes after the parole board refused to release him.

Bilinski pressed his fingertips together in a prayerlike pose as he recalled shooting and killing William "Jimmy" Robinson in east Multnomah County during a drug robbery in 1984. Bilinski talked about the heroin habit he picked up during the Vietnam War, an addiction he maintained in prison and didn't kick until he overdosed in 2001.

Since then, Bilinski said, he's turned his life around with treatment and is certain he can remain clean on the outside.

Which prompted Powers to respond: "We've heard that many times."

Bilinski answered: "I know that if I come back here, you guys will probably never let me go. I don't want to die in here."

In some ways, Bilinski's parole hearing is a throwback to an earlier era.

Two decades ago, the parole board had broad authority over prison sentences. Even though a judge sentenced Bilinski to life, the parole board has the power to release him early.

Today, judges set firm sentences based on rules set in 1989 and Measure 11, a 1994 initiative that mandates minimum sentences for violent crimes.

With the current system, most inmates serve their time without seeing the parole board, which consists of three members appointed to four-year terms by the governor.

The two other members are Darcey Baker, a former Clackamas County parole officer appointed by Kulongoski in 2004, and Candace Wheeler, a licensed social worker appointed by the governor in 2006.

Despite changes in sentencing, the parole board retains authority over about 1,600 inmates -- most of them sentenced for crimes committed more than 20 years ago.

That's about 12 percent of the state's 13,500 inmates --and among the most dangerous.

For example, the board has 31 release hearings in January and February. The list includes nine killers and 10 sex offenders.

In the hearings, the board reviews psychiatric reports, questions the inmates and takes testimony from witnesses.

After listening to Bilinski, the board cleared the hearing room to deliberate in private.

That's one of the practices that bothers critics.

"They should do it out in public. This is not a jury," said Steve Doell, president of Crime Victims United.

Powers disagreed, saying the board needs to talk candidly about confidential documents such as the inmate's psychiatric evaluations.

None of the closed-door discussion ends up in the public report.

Take the case of Raymond Francis Roy, 59, who had a parole hearing in November. Roy killed his brother and sister-in-law in Salem in 1984 after getting fired from the family business. Family members of the victims argued at the hearing that Roy hasn't spent enough time in prison for murdering two people.

The board approved his release and issued only a boilerplate explanation:

"Based on doctors' reports and diagnoses, coupled with all the information the board is considering, the board concludes that the inmate does not suffer from a present severe emotional disturbance that constitutes a danger to the health or safety of the community."

Powers said the board avoids detailed findings because they could give inmates ammunition to appeal.

For Kim White, who was 24 when Roy killed her mother, the hearing location was a sore point.

Perhaps the most significant change sought by critics would require a new law giving victims and prosecutors the right to appeal release decisions.

In a rare case overriding the parole board, Marion County Circuit Judge Paul J. Lipscomb blocked the release of Gillmore, the serial rapist. The judge said he could only order a new parole hearing for Gillmore because the board failed to give a victim proper notice.

But Lipscomb also questioned the board's rationale for releasing Gillmore because it thought he could be supervised safely.

"The only available expert evidence documents that Gillmore is even more dangerous and less amenable to be safely managed in the community," Lipscomb wrote.

Powers said the parole system is not a trial with a defense attorney and a prosecutor. It's an administrative process in which the inmate must prove he is no longer a danger or he can be safely supervised.

Still, Powers acknowledged complaints about the system and struck a conciliatory note:

"If there are suggestions that people want to bring to the 2009 Legislature, the board is willing to be a part of the changes," he said.

After deliberating for less than 30 minutes, the parole board reopened Bilinski's hearing to the public. The inmate returned to the cage.

"The board concludes that you have an emotional disturbance," Powers began. "However, the emotional disturbance is not presently so severe as to constitute a danger to the health or safety of the community."

The inmate's release date: July 27.

Bilinski shook his head.

"Bless you all. Thank you."

From The Oregonian of Thursday, May 8, 2008 -- Rapist gets new parole hearing
By Ashbel S. Green

The Oregon parole board has agreed to hold a new release hearing for convicted serial rapist Richard Troy Gillmore, ending a legal fight over an earlier decision to let him go.

"All parties agreed to stop litigating this matter and to proceed with a new parole consideration hearing for Mr. Gillmore," said Nancy Sellers, executive director of the Oregon Board of Parole & Post-Prison Supervision.

"The board entered the agreement to ensure that all parties in this unique case had the opportunity to present relevant information to the board so that it could make its decision consistent with its public safety mission."

Sellers did not announce a date for the hearing.

Gillmore was convicted in 1986 of raping a 13-year-old girl. He admitted to eight other rapes in the 1970s that were too old to prosecute. The judge ordered Gillmore to serve at least 30 years in prison, but the parole board in 1988 cut his minimum sentence in half.

The parole board refused to release Gillmore three times until last fall, when it decided tight supervision could protect the community.

The 1986 victim and the Multnomah County district attorney's office filed a lawsuit, alleging that the parole board had failed to provide 30 days' notice for its hearing.

From The Oregonian of Wednesday, June 25, 2008 -- 'Jogger rapist' victim begs state not to set him free: Richard Troy Gillmore says he has learned to correct thoughts that led to crimes
By Ashbel S. Green

SALEM - Tiffany Edens told the state parole board Tuesday that she long ago forgave the man who broke into her family home and raped her 22 years ago.

But Edens, who was 13 years old when Richard Troy Gillmore assaulted her in the kitchen, said three medical evaluations have concluded that her attacker is still too dangerous to be released.

"I do want to see him get better. But these reports are not saying that," Edens testified during a emotion-filled all-day hearing. "Why take the risk out in the community?"

The Oregonian has a policy of not naming the victims of sexual assault, but Edens said she wanted to speak out to empower women.

Gillmore, the "jogger rapist" who admitted sexually assaulting seven other women in the late 1970s and early 1980s, testified Tuesday that group therapy has helped him come to grips with his actions and prepared him to live outside of prison.

"I think you lose a little bit of your humanity when you commit crimes like this," he said. "She was deeply hurt by this."

Gillmore said he has learned to correct selfish and destructive thinking patterns that caused him to commit such terrible crimes.

"I can carry that same attitude to the streets," he said.

The board will accept additional information for a week. A decision on whether to release Gillmore is expected later this summer.

Tuesday's hearing was latest in an ongoing legal battle over whether Gillmore should be released.

The state Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision held a hearing in September and ordered him released. However, it rescinded the decision when Edens said she had been denied a chance to testify.

The parole board held a second hearing in October and again ordered him released. Edens and the Multnomah County district attorney's office then filed a lawsuit.

Earlier this year a Marion County judge ordered the parole board to hold a third hearing, finding it had failed to give Edens a reasonable amount of time to contest the release.

In Tuesday's hearing, Edens and her relatives testified that the rape devastated a girl's life, knocking her off a track of dancing and good grades and plunging her into alcohol and drugs. Even after leaving those behind, Edens still struggles with panic and fears for her safety.

"He completely took my youth away," she said.

In its previous hearings, the board concluded that Gillmore still had a mental disease or defect, but that with proper treatment he could be controlled in the community.

Parole Board Chairman Steve Powers pointed to a state law that required the board to release even a dangerous inmate if he can be safely supervised.

Multnomah County prosecutors countered with three psychological evaluations that described Gillmore as a "sexual sadist" with a severe personality disorder and a strong likelihood to reoffend.

"He is a danger to the health and safety to the community," said Darian Stanford, a deputy district attorney. "He is a poor risk."

But Gillmore said he has proven by his behavior in prison that he's ready to go free.

"The best measurement of my character today is how I conduct myself in this institution," he said.

From The Oregonian of Wednesday, July 2, 2008 -- Experts: Offender will rape again: The parole board takes final arguments on releasing the attacker
By Brad Schmidt

Psychologists who evaluated Richard Troy Gillmore say the man known as the "jogger rapist" will almost certainly rape again, and two unnamed prison guards contend he will kill if released from prison, according to documents submitted Tuesday by the Multnomah County district attorney's office.

With the state considering releasing Gillmore, one of his victims and the district attorney have been fighting in court and with the state parole board to keep him locked up.

Tuesday marked the last day that final arguments could be submitted to the parole board, which will make its release decision later this summer.

Two psychologists, Frank Colistro and Robert Stuckey, predict that Gillmore would have a high potential to re-offend.

Colistro called Gillmore a "ritualistic, habitual sex offender" who has a better than 75 percent likelihood of re-offending within 10 years. Stuckey called Gillmore a "sadistic rapist who would certainly engage in similar behaviors in the future as he has in the past."

A third psychologist, Gary McGuffin, suggests Gillmore is a "poor risk to comply with parole guidelines," according to the Multnomah County documents.

Meanwhile, the district attorney's office also presented new testimony from two unnamed female corrections officers who believe Gillmore will kill if released from prison.

Last week, Gillmore told the parole board that group therapy has helped him prepare to live outside prison. He said he has learned to correct the destructive thinking that caused him to sexually assault.

"I can carry that same attitude to the streets," said Gillmore, who has admitted sexually assaulting eight women in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Gillmore was convicted of raping Tiffany Edens, and Edens and the Multnomah County district attorney sued last year to block his January release. The Oregonian typically does not name sexual assault victims, but Edens, raped by Gillmore at the age of 13, has publicized her story to raise awareness.

Multnomah County on Tuesday also reasserted that the parole board must consider how and where Gillmore will be treated, if released. Attorneys argued that Gillmore's past sexual assaults - for which he was not convicted - should factor into the board's decision.

"On any level you want to look at, the answer is, this guy shouldn't be let out," said Deputy District Attorney Darian Stanford. "I've never seen anything like this."

Danielle Tudor kept her eyes glued to the bank of TV sets as she exercised on her gym's elliptical trainer last week. A reporter was interviewing Tiffany Edens shortly after the 35-year-old woman urged the state parole board not to release the man who raped her.

Tudor knew at that moment she couldn't be silent any more.

"I'm just like, 'Wow. . . She's out there all alone. There are other victims. They need to know it's more than just Tiffany.' "

Twenty-nine years ago, Tudor was a 17-year-old girl home alone watching TV when Richard Troy Gillmore burst into her Southeast Portland home and sexually assaulted her.

Tudor, now 45, has rarely talked about what happened to her the night of Nov. 11, 1979. She didn't share it with many beyond her immediate family and husband. But when she saw Edens on television, she was struck by her strength.

She opened up to the women who work for her home-cleaning business. With their encouragement, Tudor chose to speak out for the first time Wednesday. She is the second of Gillmore's eight victims to publicly describe how his attack robbed her of her innocence and youth and shattered her sense of security.

"It's hard for me to sit by," Tudor said. "I just thought about it . . . We've left Tiffany out there to speak for all of us."

The state parole board is considering releasing Gillmore, now 48. Its decision is due this summer.

Tudor said the last time she saw Edens was when they were together in court more than 20 years ago, waiting to testify at Gillmore's sentencing.

In 1987, a Multnomah County judge convicted Gillmore of raping Edens, who was then 13. Once arrested, Gillmore confessed to seven other rapes from the late 1970s. The other cases were not tried because the statute of limitations on a rape charge - three years in the late 1980s, six years today - had passed.

When Gillmore attacked Tudor, the David Douglas High School senior had just gotten home from her job at Fred Meyer and was watching "The King and I," in the basement den. Her parents had left about 6:45 p.m. to visit friends, and her four older siblings weren't home.

"I thought I heard a noise outside the door," she said. "But I didn't pay much attention."

She figured it was the wind.

Suddenly, a strange man kicked in the door to the den from the garage.

"I stared at him and he stared at me, and none of us moved," she said. "My heart was pounding out of my chest."

Unlike the other assaults he confessed to, Gillmore wore nothing to conceal his face. He turned and ran out.

She ran up two flights to her parents' bedroom and called 9-1-1. The family poodle padded after her into the dark bedroom. As Tudor was on the phone, she told the dispatcher, "The dog is starting to growl . . . I think he's coming back."

Tudor said she could see the stranger coming up the stairs. Now, he wore a bandana over his face and was holding a 31/2-foot-long stick. He entered the bedroom, kicked the lamp over, yanked the phone out of the wall and demanded to know who she had called. Her brother, she said.

He hit her in the stomach with his fist, pushed her up against the wall, threatened her with his stick and then picked her up and threw her on her parents' bed. He struggled to remove her pants. She said she was wearing pantyhose and polyester pants.

"That turned out to work in my favor," she recalls.

She kicked and pleaded: "Don't hurt me." They wrestled, and she was knocked to the floor. Finally, he had pulled down her pants, removed his own and attempted to rape her.

He tried to penetrate but couldn't. Tudor, a virgin at the time, remembers yelling, "I've never done this before. . . . I've got no idea." He called her a liar.

He backed off, demanded to know where the family kept money and put on his pants. He rifled through a drawer. Tudor turned to look, and he pushed her head down and ran.

Tudor, in shock, grabbed a bathrobe and fled to the neighbors. As she was running, officers were arriving at her home.

At a local hospital that night, she gave police a detailed description of her attacker. He was about 18, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-8, wearing a peach-colored sweatshirt, tennis shoes and jogging shorts under jeans. The composite sketch done in the hospital was such a striking resemblance, it frightened her. Police say it helped solve the case seven years later.

She picked Gillmore out of a lineup of eight to 10 men.

The effects of that day haunted her. She had been chosen to be the student director of "The Music Man." The day after the attack was the first rehearsal. She couldn't show her face. Her mother told the drama teacher. A counselor met with all of her teachers.

Tudor was leery of boys. She kept to herself. She also missed a lot of school. "I went into a shell. I went into a locked-down mode," she said. "I couldn't be home alone. And, I thought, 'If I can't be home alone, am I ever going to be free?' "

One afternoon when she came home from school, she heard the front door open. Instinctively, Tudor bolted out the back, climbed over a rear fence to a neighbor's house and called police. It turned out only to be her mother and grandmother arriving home.

To this day, "the statute of limitations" is like a four-letter word to Tudor. Gillmore had confessed to her assault, yet he couldn't be prosecuted.

"It didn't seem fair," she said.

Multnomah County prosecutor Russ Ratto had called Tudor before the June 24 state parole board hearing to see if she wanted to join Edens in testifying. Shocked by the call, Tudor said no. She said she wouldn't have known what to say. But after watching Edens on television, she changed her mind.

"I'm proud of Tiffany, I am," Tudor said. "You cannot let the perpetrator be the one to win."

Tudor doesn't believe that Gillmore is reformed. To do what he did, he must've been "deranged," she said. She wants the parole board members to think of all eight victims. She wants them to ask themselves how they'd feel if it were their daughters? "Would you want to see him out?"

Tudor married shortly after high school. She has two sons, ages 25 and 19. She planned to tell them of her attack for the first time Wednesday night.

Her children never knew her secret, but she said it was always intruding on her life. She always needed to know exactly where her sons were at any moment. She still can't be alone at night.

"To this day, if I hear that garage door go up or down, I ask, 'Is the door closed? Is the alarm set?' And, that's every, every night."

She still kicks herself for staying in the house. "You replay it over and over and over again. Why did I go to the bedroom? Why didn't I go out the front door? As a victim, I don't think you ever give up that, 'Why didn't I ?' "

Gillmore may have served 21 years since his conviction, she said, but "we're going to live with it all our lives."

From The Oregonian of Tuesday, July 8, 2008 -- Third rape victim speaks out: Colleen Kelly, 41, opposes the release of Richard Troy Gillmore, who attacked her 28 years ago
By Maxine Bernstein

Colleen Kelly was 13 when a man broke into her Southeast Portland home and raped her before her mother arrived home that night. It was her mom's birthday.

Seven years later, Kelly was among several victims of unsolved sexual assaults asked to view a suspect lineup.

The intruder had worn a nylon stocking over his head, but Kelly remembered his voice. She asked if she could hear the men speak. A judge wouldn't let them repeat what the rapist had uttered; instead, they were to recite nursery rhymes.

"As soon as he recited 'Mary had a little lamb,' I knew that was him," Kelly recalled. It was a voice that I just never got out of my head."

Kelly, the third victim of Richard Troy Gillmore to speak publicly, says the prospect that he may be released from prison frightens her. She has watched news coverage sporadically since last fall when the state parole board was readying to release him. If he gets out, she vows she'll move.

"I will leave the state of Oregon because I just don't want to be around him," said the 41-year-old mother of two. "I will not risk it."

Kelly was inspired by two other victims of Gillmore who have talked openly about their rapes. Her mother, JoAnn Kelly, suggested her daughter speak out too, hoping it will help them both find peace after 28 years.

Her mother said, "I don't think people realize that when something like this happens it really makes it hard on the rest of the family too."

Seated beside her daughter, JoAnn Kelly, 69, continued, her voice breaking, "It hurts me because I felt like I neglected her because I wasn't with her. . . . I don't think I ever have gotten over that."

In 1987, a Multnomah County judge convicted Gillmore of raping another 13-year-old girl, Tiffany Edens. Once arrested, Gillmore confessed to seven earlier rapes, including Kelly's. The other cases were not tried because the statute of limitations - three years in the late 1980s, six years today - had passed.

Gillmore, now 48, was originally sentenced to 60 years in prison with a 30-year minimum sentence, but the parole board in 1988 cut the minimum sentence in half.

On Oct. 27, 1980, Kelly came home from middle school with a friend, who helped her bake a cake for her mom's birthday. Since it was a school night, her friend left about 8:45 p.m. An hour later, Kelly's older sister called from work, and JoAnn Kelly went to pick her up. Kelly's dad was working his graveyard shift at Boeing.

Kelly had taken a bath and was relaxing on the living room couch in a nightgown, watching TV and thumbing through a magazine. She heard some odd noises by the front door, including the rattling of a garbage can lid. She assumed it was neighborhood kids.

Then she heard her a window open. Suddenly, a strange man stood before her. He wore white running shorts, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a nylon stocking over his face.

She stood up to run, but the intruder grabbed her and placed his hand over her mouth.

"The way he had grabbed me, I couldn't kick him. I couldn't grab a hold of anything. He just took me into my room," she said.

She screamed as he held her down, her hands and knees on the floor. He struck her several times in the lower back with his fist, and threatened to hit her again if she didn't shut up. Then he rolled her onto her back and tore her panties off. He pulled down his shorts and climbed on top.

Kelly struggled to reach for a hammer she had left next to her bed after hanging posters, but it was too far away. Her attacker yelled at her to spread her legs.

"I crossed my legs, and kept them crossed until he hit me in the stomach," she said. "He hit me, and I think my body just went limp."

She told him that her mother was due home soon. He said he'd rape her too.

Shortly after 10 p.m., Kelly's mom arrived home. "I put the key in the door, and I heard someone run and a door slam," JoAnn Kelly recalled. She saw her daughter come out of her room, her face white.

"I took a look at her face, and I knew instantly something had happened," her mother said. "She couldn't even talk."

JoAnn Kelly called police at 10:12 p.m. She found her bedroom window open; the screen lying in the yard. After a brief interview at home, police took the 13-year-old to a rape crisis center for an exam.

"That freaked me out more than anything," Kelly recalled.

Kelly couldn't return to school for at least two weeks. She went from getting straight As and Bs to failing her classes. She gave up gymnastics because her lower back ached. "I was just kind of like in a daze for the longest time," she said.

She wouldn't sleep in her bedroom. Her parents fixed a bed of blankets beside their bed. She slept holding on to her mother's hand. "She wouldn't let go. If I rolled over and let go, she screamed. She did that all night long," JoAnn Kelly recalled.

Her father, Ron Kelly, walked the neighborhood each night, "making sure that guy wasn't around," his wife said. A counselor suggested they move. Two months later, they did. It helped, somewhat. A year later, JoAnn Kelly didn't want any birthday celebration.

Kelly dropped out of Centennial High School. She married a short time later and had kids of her own. She was a 20-year-old mother with a 4-month-old daughter when she was called in to view Gillmore in a lineup. She recognized his "kind of soft, not really deep" voice and later testified at his sentencing hearing. There, she told Gillmore she could forgive him for what he did, "but I won't forget it."

Though she was determined not to let his attack take over her life, Kelly has been through two failed marriages and says she never really learned to trust a man. She was upfront with her two children about what occurred and constantly reminded her daughter when she became a teenager that, "You can't let your guard down."

Kelly says she is pretty sure she received a recorded phone message years later from Gillmore, by then in prison, saying "You girls are going to pay." She alerted investigators, but it was never confirmed that the message came from Gillmore.

Kelly still refuses to live in a ground-level home. She asks employers to walk her to her car at night. With Gillmore up for parole again, Kelly says nightmares interfere with her sleep.

But at her parents' urging, Kelly agreed it was time to make a statement and do what she can to make sure Gillmore does not get out. The parole board is expected to decide this summer whether to release him.

"If we all come forward and come together as one, we hopefully can stop this," she said. "If I can prevent this from happening to another, I will."

From The Oregonian of Thursday, July 24, 2008 -- 4th victim steps forward to protest release of rapist: Details of Richard Gillmore's attack stay vivid for Renee Smith, who lives quietly at coast
By Maxine Bernstein

In the nearly three decades since a stranger broke into her Portland home, grabbed her from behind and raped her, Renee M. Smith finally found some solace working at a motel on the Oregon coast where she had vacationed with her family before the attack.

After a hard life that included a failed marriage and drug abuse, she returned to the spot where she found a measure of happiness as a kid.

"This is my special place," Smith said.

Then a few days ago, a Multnomah County prosecutor stunned her with a call telling her that the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision was considering releasing her attacker, serial rapist Richard Gillmore.

Now Smith is Gillmore's fourth victim to go public with her story.

"I don't want to see this guy getting out," said Smith, 45. "I'd rather speak out, than run and hide, like I've done pretty much all of my life."

Smith was 17 when she was raped Dec. 11, 1980, by a man who broke into her house. A dog tracked his scent for blocks, but police couldn't identify a suspect until six years later in 1986.

That's when police charged Gillmore with the rape of a 13-year-old girl, Tiffany Edens. Once arrested, he confessed to seven earlier rapes, including Smith's. Prosecutors didn't try the other cases because the statute of limitations --three years in the late 1980s, six years today --had passed.

Yet Smith was among the eight victims who testified at Gillmore's sentencing in 1987. She remembers it -- "the most horrible day in my life."

"It was scary up on that stand. I couldn't wait for that to be over," Smith said Tuesday, recalling how his defense attorney grilled her with degrading questions, such as why was she wearing shorts and a tank top on a winter day. "I was just horrified. Just being there in front of him, and he's just sitting there looking at you."

At the time of the rape, Smith was renting a home on Southeast 141st Avenue in Portland with her boyfriend. She had dropped out of high school.

About 5:30 p.m. that December night, her boyfriend left to play basketball with friends at a nearby school. Smith was washing dishes in the kitchen. The window's curtains were open as she stood at the sink.

About a half-hour later, she walked from the kitchen toward the master bedroom. She was walking in the hallway and thought she heard a noise coming from their spare bedroom, but didn't think anything of it.

"That's when he grabbed me," Smith said.

The man seemed to appear out of nowhere. He put his arms around her waist and covered her mouth. She said she tried to scream, but the man held her tightly.

"Be quiet and move," he ordered, and shoved Smith toward the bedroom.

He knocked Smith onto the bed, told her to roll onto her back. He covered her face with a blanket in the dark bedroom and tied her wrists together with a man's white sock he apparently had with him. Smith said she tried to remain calm, "so he'd hurry up and leave."

Once he got up, he disappeared as fast as he arrived. Smith said she was able to shake her hands loose from the sock. She reached beneath the bed for the .44 Magnum her boyfriend kept there and called police at 6:20 p.m.

Dressed only in her tank top, she waited in the living room and wrapped a sleeping bag around her body. She held onto the gun.

Multnomah County sheriff's deputies arrived, their guns drawn, frightening the teenager. "Hello ... I'm the victim," she recalled thinking. Her mother, boyfriend and a rape victim's advocate came to the hospital.

Police dusted an outside light bulb that the suspect appeared to have unscrewed on the outside garage, but found no prints. A police dog tracked the suspect's scent to Southeast 147th.

At first, Smith "just tried to bury" what happened. She didn't tell anyone about it, except her immediate family. She eventually moved from the home where she was attacked because she had trouble sleeping, even with sleeping pills. "I didn't feel safe there," she said.

Her boyfriend felt guilty for not being around to protect her, but he supported her. "I wanted to be left alone, but at the same time I didn't," she said.

To keep from thinking about the crime, Smith worked long hours at a local auto parts store. "It kind of helped occupy my time," she recalled.

Smith and her boyfriend married a year later, but it didn't last. Their lives were torn apart by cocaine use.

By 21, she had left him. She moved out of the state, spent time with a sister in North Carolina and got drug free. She bounced around to different states and had two more horrifying experiences --in Florida, she said she was slipped a date-rape drug and assaulted by three men, no one was arrested; later in Alabama, she said police rescued her from an abusive boyfriend.

"I have no real respect for men," Smith said. "I don't trust them."

She now holds two jobs --her own cleaning business and housekeeping work at the coastal motel. She works seven days a week. The rest of the time, she said, she hangs out with her dog in her trailer home. "I just stay away from the world," she said.

She hasn't followed any of the recent news regarding Gillmore's potential release. So she broke down shortly after the prosecutor left a message with her work manager last week, saying he wanted to talk about the 1980 crime. She had to call in sick the next day.

"I was just crying," Smith said. "My stomach was in knots."

Smith came forward because she said she wanted to do her part to keep Gillmore in custody.

"He's ruined so many people's lives. He doesn't deserve to have a life of his own. He threw that chance away when he did what he did to all of us girls."

Editorial from The Oregonian of Tuesday, July 29, 2008 -- The real life sentences: Rape victims could serve more time than their attacker if the parole board decides to gamble on public safety

The young women who were sexually attacked and beaten at home in Portland decades ago by an intruder named Richard Troy Gillmore got longer sentences than their predator did. They got life - a lifetime of looking over their shoulders and remaining on high alert, like prey.

Gillmore's sentence may end as early as this year if the state parole board decides to give him another lucky break. He is ready to move on, he testified to the board last month.

Meanwhile, the women struggle to escape the past. Several went public for the first time this month, telling their stories to The Oregonian's Maxine Bernstein.

"You replay it over and over and over again," said one.

"It was a voice that I just never got out of my head," said another.

"I have no real respect for men," said a third. "I don't trust them."

"You just never have the sense you can protect yourself enough," said a fourth.

In 1986, Gillmore broke into a Portland home and raped 13-year-old Tiffany Edens. Upon his arrest, he confessed to assaulting at least seven other local girls and women during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Oregon had a three-year statute of limitations at the time for prosecuting rape, so this notorious "jogger rapist" could be prosecuted and convicted only for the crime against Edens.

Gillmore got a 60-year maximum sentence, which the parole board promptly cut in half. Now he wants to be let out after serving only about a third of his original maximum sentence. The parole board may grant his wish despite expert testimony that Gillmore, now 48 and still jogging, is dangerous and highly likely to rape again.

In fact, the board already voted last year to release Gillmore - but a court blocked the release, criticized the board for ignoring its own protocols and ordered a reconsideration. Edens' lonely testimony at a parole board hearing in June helped inspire four additional victims to go public, one by one: Renee Smith, who was attacked at age 17; Colleen Kelly at 13; Danielle Tudor at 17; and a fifth woman at 22.

These women now range in age from mid-30s to early 50s. They've figured out ways to survive, finding solace in work or family. But they're all still looking out for Gillmore. And they all struggle to feel safe - in parking garages, on the street and especially at home.

"To this day, if I hear that garage door go up or down, I ask, 'Is the door closed? Is the alarm set?' " Tudor told The Oregonian. "And, that's every, every night."

Oregon's statute of limitations is now six years for rape. It's 25 years for crimes that involve DNA evidence, an important extension passed last year by the Legislature. Laws, policies and public awareness related to sexual assault are far better than they were at the time of Gillmore's conviction.

Yet Oregon still has work to do, as the Gillmore case suggests. The system can favor the bad guy, even if he's a convicted serial rapist who invades homes and attacks teenagers. And victims can spend their whole lives bracing for the worst.

From The Oregonian of Saturday, July 26, 2008 -- Another Gillmore victim speaks up: The woman moved out of state and kept her secret of sexual assault for 29 years
By Maxine Bernstein

She was 22 when a stranger grabbed her by the throat in the hallway of her Portland ranch house, punched her repeatedly in the face to stop her from screaming and then attempted to rape her while holding a hatchet to her head.

The young woman ran to a neighbor and called police.

But since the Jan. 8, 1979, sexual assault, the woman concealed the truth about what happened from her family, even from her mother.

She only told them she had been beaten. She was afraid to cause pain to her mother, who was still mourning the death of her older brother from an accidental drowning a few years earlier.

Now, the 51-year-old married mother of two children, has become the fifth victim of serial rapist Richard T. Gillmore to go public with her story. The woman, who lives out of state, said she is still struggling to come to terms herself with what happened 29 years ago. She said she is starting to share the full details of that night with her husband and plans to seek counseling.

A Multnomah County prosecutor tracked her down Thursday to let her know that a state parole board is considering releasing Gillmore. She said that news prompted her to speak, although she's not ready to use her name because her family still doesn't know.

"I think it could repeat itself," the woman said, explaining why she agreed to talk. "It's too great a risk."

Gillmore was arrested in 1986 after raping 13-year-old Tiffany Edens. He confessed to seven earlier sexual assaults, including this woman's. But he was not prosecuted in the earlier cases because the three-year statute of limitations had passed.

The 22-year-old was rooming with two other women in a ranch house in the 14700 block of Southeast Rhine Street. She had attended Mt. Hood Community College for two years, and had just begun working as a secretary for a local law firm.

About 8 p.m., the woman was fixing dinner in the kitchen when she glimpsed someone in the hallway. She thought it might have been one of her roommates. She stepped toward the hallway, and asked, "OK, who's home?"

"I went around the corner and there he was," she recalled. "And then he grabbed me around the throat."

He held her in a headlock, and demanded money. He then slugged her in the face, forced her onto the floor, and demanded money again. She told him she had $3.

She struggled with the stranger, who had pantyhose over his face. Then she noticed a small hatchet in his hand.

"I was screaming, and he was striking me," she recalled.

"All I could think of was my mother. If something happened to me after my brother's death, she wouldn't be able to live with this."

He continued to punch her in the face, four or five times. Then he tore off her shirt, and rubbed the edge of his hatchet along her neck and face.

She said she wondered if she should try something from her self-defense class. "Do I really dare do this or not? If I do this, and I missed, what would he do to me?" she recalled thinking. "And he was over me the whole time with the hatchet."

He tore open her pants. When he couldn't penetrate her, he raised the hatchet over his head. She closed her eyes, anticipating a blow. Instead, he struck the hatchet into a contact lens case on the floor.

When he got up, "I ran for the door," she said.

She ran out the front door to her neighbor's house, holding up her pants. Her nose was bleeding and her left eye black-and-blue, police reports say.

The young woman, one of 12 children, didn't tell the details to her family, who lived in the Willamette Valley. When her mother asked whether she had been sexually assaulted, the young woman said no.

"When she asked me, you could see the flood of relief when she learned that I was not violated," she said, trying to speak through tears. "I told them that I'd been beaten up. I didn't tell them about anything else. . . . OK, I've been lying about this for 20-some years. Maybe it was just my defense mechanism."

They got a huge dog to live with them afterward. About five months later, they all moved out. By 1986, police asked the woman to view photos of a possible suspect. She picked Gillmore out of a lineup, not by recognizing his face, but by his physical build, specifically his neck. The next year, she was among the victims who spoke at his sentencing - again, she didn't tell anyone in her family.

"It was horrible," she recalled. "You're just kind of in a daze, and denial, and just want to get through it."

The woman married some time later, only telling her husband of the beating, nothing more. They have two children, a daughter, 13, and son, 9. She worked for many years in downtown Portland as a secretary in a law firm. Her mother has since died.

The fear has stuck with her. She would cross the street if there were men walking toward her. Often terrified someone was in her home, "I'd go through all the cupboards and closets with a baseball bat," she said. "You just never have the sense you can protect yourself enough."

From The Oregonian of Sunday, July 27, 2008 -- Rape victims find power in their voices: Gillmore case Experts say the five women who went public stand to empower themselves and inspire others
By Maxine Bernstein

Danielle Tudor, Colleen Kelly and Renee Smith remembered waiting in the hallway of the Multnomah County Courthouse in 1987, watching a 13-year-old girl named Tiffany practice her dance steps.

The young women and the girl shared a horrible secret -each had been raped by Richard Gillmore - but it wasn't something they could speak about, even to one another. They waited in silence to take their turns testifying at Gillmore's sentencing hearing, barred by legal rules from talking to one another.

The silence would last 21 years.

So when the women this summer learned from newspaper and television reports that 35-year-old Tiffany Edens was speaking out to ensure that their rapist remained in prison, they believed they needed to do the same.

In an age when rape victims' identities are still shrouded in secrecy, the quick succession of these women coming forward in the past few weeks to talk about how the sexual assaults scarred their lives is remarkable, victims advocates say.

One after another, Tudor, Kelly and Smith went public -telling in horrifying detail how Gillmore broke into their homes to beat and rape them. They gave names and faces to victims who had been anonymous.

Phyllis Barkhurst, co-founder of the Oregon Sexual Assault Task Force, said she doesn't recall so many victims speaking out at one time in Oregon. "I don't remember on this scale, and I'm very happy about it."

National experts said more and more victims are no longer willing to remain silent. Around the country, there are sexual assault victims' speakers bureaus, and the number of people signing up to share their stories is growing.

People who work in the field say it may reflect an increase in public education about sex crimes and that victims aren't to blame, the availability of more counseling and more experienced crisis workers, and a sense that speaking out may help victims regain the control they lost.

Scott Berkowitz, president and founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network in Washington, D.C., said his agency's speakers bureau has doubled in just the past year. Now, it has more than 500 speakers.

"Culturally, I think there's a much greater realization this is a serious, violent crime, and they realize there's nothing to be ashamed about," Berkowitz said. "For many victims, talking is cathartic. It's part of the recovery process. In a case like this, there's a special motivation: Their voice can help prevent a further injustice. What can be more empowering than that?"

Gillmore's victims were stunned to learn that Gillmore, now 48, was up for parole. Once informed of the possibility of his release, they seemed driven to do what they could to keep him locked up. Though they haven't spoken to one another, each said she felt a sort of kinship with the others who suffered through similar experiences.

Danielle Tudor, who was 17 when Gillmore raped her Nov. 11, 1979, was impressed when she saw Edens on a TV interview after Gillmore's June 24 parole hearing.

Renee Smith, who was 17 when she was raped Dec. 11, 1980, last week became the fourth victim to speak out. She said it hurt to retell her story, but she felt emboldened by the other women who had already come forward.

"It's something I need to do," she said. "If the other girls were strong enough to do this, I should be strong enough to do it too."

Sexual assault experts said there's strength in numbers, and victims of stranger rape are more likely to speak publicly. Those sexually assaulted by a relative usually are more reluctant, concerned about compromising family relationships.

Many rape victims immediately feel they're alone. They often blame themselves or feel they should have done something different.

"Seeing there are other people in the same situation helps people understand that they did nothing wrong, and there's no shame about what happened to me," Berkowitz said.

They also don't feel so isolated. "It's a lot easier to do when you're not the only one," said Kellie Greene, founder of Speaking Out Against Rape, or SOAR. Greene formed the nonprofit in 1999, five years after she was raped and beaten at age 28 in her Orlando, Fla., apartment. She said she spoke publicly about her assault six months after the crime, before her attacker was arrested.

"It was a way for me to direct my anger," Greene said.

Boston lawyer Wendy Murphy, who teaches at the New England School of Law about sexual violence and represents sexual assault victims, said if there is more than one victim, they're also more likely to report the crime. She represents three of seven women who say a Massachusetts state senator sexually assaulted them.

"When they believed they were the only victim, they not only didn't want to identify themselves publicly, but they didn't want to tell anybody," Murphy said. "Once they found out about each other, they felt a lot stronger."

But Murphy cautioned that it's very important not to draw any generalizations. For each victim, it's different. "It's such a personal crime," Murphy said. "It has to be a deeper personal decision whether to speak out and identify yourself."

On Friday, a fifth victim, a 51-year-old woman who was beaten and sexually assaulted by Gillmore when she was 22, agreed to tell her story after learning about Gillmore's possible parole. But she asked that her name not be used. She never told her family of the sexual assault, worried it would destroy her mother, who was grieving her brother's accidental death a few years earlier. "I buried this in the sand so much," she said.

Historically, victims haven't had the opportunity to come forward in this way, Barkhurst said. When the Oregon Sexual Assault Task Force started filming a survivors' video in 2002, it found that victims wanted to tell people what happened to them and what they experienced, as well as to give advice to police and hospital nurses on how to treat victims of sexual assault, Barkhurst said.

Greene, of Florida, also gives sexual assault victims the opportunity to talk about their experiences through her TEAM SOAR program, which has 23 survivors across the nation. "When we sent out the notice, I was stunned. I got over 200 applications. It kind of validated what I had experienced. If given the opportunity, survivors aren't ashamed to speak out. They want to use their full names. They don't want to be in silhouette, but say 'This happened to me. I'm not damaged.' "

Barkhurst said a rape victim's terror doesn't ease over time. "Even though these women are in their 30s or older, they're going to feel that same level of fear they felt at that time," Barkhurst said, speaking of when the women heard of Gillmore's potential release, "and that's quite a motivating factor for them and their family."

At Gillmore's 1987 sentencing, his victims didn't get a chance to comfort one another. Edens was 13; the other victims were in their 20s by then.

Because Gillmore was not prosecuted for the seven other sexual assaults he confessed to because the statute of limitations had passed, the state was not required to notify those victims that Gillmore was up for parole. That fell to Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Russ Ratto, who has worked to track them down over the past several weeks.

"Tiffany has given them an opportunity to address what they've lived with all these years - in a way that's different than living in the shadows," Ratto said. "Sometimes the monster in the dark needs light."

Since she spoke out and her name and face were on The Oregonian's front page, Colleen Kelly said the reaction has been positive. "I felt good, because I think it was just about time to get it all out there. Just to come forward and try to help prevent other victims, gives me strength."

Tiffany Edens' mother said she's closely read the accounts of the other women. She keeps calling them "girls," because that's how she remembers them. "We've often thought of the other victims," said Rebecca Edens-Ahsing. "I feel thankful that they're coming forward, but I feel their agony."

Aside from sharing the hurt, the women may turn their collective strength toward lobbying the Legislature to expand or even eliminate the statute of limitations for rape. In the late '70s and early '80s, it was three years; now it's six years.

Tudor, Kelly and Smith all were disturbed that their crimes weren't prosecuted because too many years had passed since their rapes.

Sexual assault advocates suggested it would be healing for the women to meet. "Nobody can know what they went through like they can with each other, so I hope somebody provides that opportunity," Barkhurst said.

And, with Ratto's organizing, they are working to schedule a gathering next week.

"It's been encouraging for each one to step out," Tudor said. "I think it will be good for us to actually get to see each other and be a support for one another."

From The Oregonian of Wednesday, July 30, 2008 -- Two more tell of scars Gillmore inflicted: A woman attacked at 16 and brother of another victim speak out against releasing the rapist
By Maxine Bernstein

The tales of two more women who were raped in the early 1980s by Richard T. Gillmore are being shared: one from a 44-year-old woman who was raped at 16, and endured years of blame; and the other told by the brother of a woman who killed herself at age 33, eight years after she was attacked.

Alisa Warner, now living in Anchorage, Alaska, was raped in the backyard of her boyfriend's Southeast Portland house on March 2, 1980. When a Multnomah County prosecutor recently told her about Gillmore's potential release, Warner said she wanted to speak out.

"I have a daughter now, and I never want her to go through this," Warner said Tuesday night.

Mike Jacobs, 57, whose sister Patricia Henkel was 25 when she was raped in Southeast Portland on Jan. 14, 1981, said he had no idea Gillmore was responsible until he heard from the prosecutor. Jacobs, who got the call from his sister after she was raped and also the call from police years later when his sister shot herself, said he has wondered if the rape contributed to her suicide.

"There was never a note. There wasn't an obvious reason. She was obviously very unhappy," Jacobs said. "As a brother, it leaves you guessing. Who knows? I don't know if I can point to the assault as starting her spiral downward. But I knew it didn't help."

With Warner's and Henkel's stories, seven of Gillmore's victims have shared their accounts as the 48-year-old serial rapist waits for the state parole board to decide this summer whether to release him. Once Gillmore was arrested in 1986 following the rape of a 13-year-old girl, he confessed to at least seven other sex assaults, including the attacks on these two women.

The night Warner was raped, the 16-year-old Gresham Union High School student, was listening to music and drinking beer at her girlfriend's house. She argued with her boyfriend, and he stormed off. She followed. him. to try to patch things up.

She walked to his house, and banged on his window, but got no response. So she hunkered down in the front yard, sitting with her back to the street for about 45 minutes. She was wondering whether to walk home to Gresham, or go back to her friend's apartment. "I thought I better not walk home because I could get raped," she recalled.

Suddenly, a hand clamped over her mouth. She turned and she said her attacker punched her in the left eye. She heard a man say, "Scream and I'll kill you." She tried to stand up, but he pushed her down as a car passed.

"He had a hand over my mouth, and he had both of my hands behind my back," Warner said.

He lifted up her shirt to cover her face and dragged her to the back yard. At first she tried not to challenge him, thinking back to what she learned in a class she had taken about stranger rape.

"I tried to play along, and that didn't work, ," she said. "I was just yelling help and nobody heard me."

He removed all her clothes, except her shirt and raped her, threatening to stab her if she fought. After he got up, she tried to stand, but he hit her in the face, and kicked her in the stomach. He threatened to cut off one of her breasts as a souvenir. He ordered her to count to 100, and took off.

She remembers sitting there, crying. He had taken her coat, her clothes, her house keys, her garage door opener. She covered herself with her shirt, and pounded again on her boyfriend's window. Finally, his mother woke up, brought her in the house and gave her a blanket and clothes. She wanted to call the police. Warner said no.

"I was scared. I was outside, after curfew," she says, her voice trailing off.

The boyfriend's mother took her to her girlfriend's house, where she called the rape crisis hotline. Police were called, and they told Warner she must call her mother.

"That was the worst thing in my mind," she recalled. But she did. Once on the line, Warner just cried, and tried to tell her what happen. She was taken to a hospital alone, and her mother and her mother's boyfriend picked her up.

"I remember him yelling at me all the way home," she says. "Sure enough, he laid into me, telling me it was all my fault, that I was a 'tease' and had asked for it."

Just three years earlier, Warner had lost her dad, who hung himself.

Warner finished high school, is on her third marriage and has a 7-year-old adopted daughter. She says she rarely visits Oregon, even though she has family here, because of the terrifying experience.

Patricia Henkel was cleaning her older brother's home on Southeast 156th Avenue on Jan. 14, 1981, when the doorbell rang twice about 8:40 p.m. The first time, no one was outside. When she looked the second time, a man grabbed her by the neck, threw her to the ground and dragged her to a pile of wood chips near the side of the house. He pulled her sweatshirt over her face, and raped her. Once he left, she called her parents' house. Her older brother, Jacobs got the call."She was a kind, nice person, but she was hateful towards this man that did this to her," Jacobs recalled. His sister struggled to keep a job, started using cocaine, got mixed up with the wrong boyfriends and never could get on a straight track. When their mother died in 1986 from an unexpected heart attack, Henkel spiraled downwards.

On Mother's Day, May 14, 1989, Jacobs got the call from police that his sister, now 33, had put a gun to her head at someone's trailer home and killed herself. "She was kind of lost," Jacobs said. "It's frustrating and painful. We wished we could have done something more, or gotten her help."

From The Oregonian of Thursday, July 31, 2008 -- Gillmore's victims strengthen bonds: As the women move on, they acknowledge achievement and friendship
By Maxine Bernstein

-- Video by Kraig Scattarella

The last time Tiffany Edens, Colleen Kelly and Danielle Tudor were together, they were young, nervous and vulnerable.

On Wednesday, more than two decades later, the three women -- each a victim of serial rapist Richard Gillmore -- met and spoke with one another for the first time, something they never dreamed they would do.

After several hours together, through tears and laughs, they described their gathering as therapeutic and found they struck up an immediate camaraderie that they're committed to fostering.

"To me," Kelly said, "it was like an instant connection with Danielle and Tiffany."

In between appearances before the media, Edens, 35, and Kelly, 41, ducked away from the reporters and TV cameras to spend some private moments together. Edens drove Kelly back to her home, introduced her to her children and to her family's large German shepherd "Smoke," named after the police dog that tracked Gillmore's scent to a field behind his home after her rape in December 1986. Then, the two women headed to downtown Portland for lunch.

"We talked a bit about Gillmore and our experiences," Kelly said. "But it was more like getting to know a new friend."

Tudor, 45, already has reached out by phone to provide support to two other Gillmore victims who shared accounts of their rapes in the past month. They've also started plotting what they can collectively work toward to make sure other women don't suffer as they did: from lobbying the Legislature for a change in the statute of limitations for rape to ensuring victims' rights aren't trampled but strengthened at parole hearings.

"Just between us." Tudor said, "there's a strength."

Though Tudor said their connection is not a "sisterhood that you really wanted to be a part of," she's committed to making something positive come from what they've endured.

"It's a healing process," Tudor said.

Tudor was 17 when she was raped Nov. 11, 1979, in her Southeast Portland home. Kelly was 13 when Gilmore broke into her Southeast Portland home and sexually assaulted her on her mother's birthday, Oct. 27, 1980. Edens was 13 when she was raped by Gillmore in the kitchen of her Troutdale home Dec. 5, 1986.

Gillmore, now 48, was convicted in Edens' rape, and confessed to eight other sexual assaults, Multnomah County prosecutor Russ Ratto said Wednesday. Six of the victims have spoken publicly about their ordeal; the brother of a seventh victim who committed suicide eight years after the assault spoke on her behalf.

"We were vulnerable kids just doing our own thing," Edens said, seated between Tudor and Kelly at the Multnomah County district attorney's office.

Turning to Tudor, Edens said, "You wanted to be a director." Edens continued, "I wanted to be a dancer." And turning to Kelly, Edens said, "and, she wanted to be a gymnast." Gillmore robbed some of their childhood dreams, they agreed, but he also destroyed his own life in the process.

It was Edens who first spoke out publicly, fighting to prevent Gillmore's planned release last fall from prison and then addressing the parole board in June after fighting for her right to be heard. The other women followed her lead.

"It was very daunting for me and my family," Edens admitted. "It felt really good to me and my family to maybe have sparked courage with another person and another person . . . because it's empowering."

The three women recalled the endless waiting in the Multnomah County Courthouse hallways before each testified at Gillmore's sentencing. They talked of how the rapes hurt their parents, who struggled with guilt at not being able to protect their daughters. And how now, as mothers themselves, they're protective of their own children. Edens shared how her 10-year-old son hid beneath a desk at school because he feared Gillmore getting out.

"He has really penetrated into all of our lives, our family, our friends," Edens said. "Now, it's my children who are being affected."

Edens shared with the other women her frustrations with the parole process. They vowed to be there for one another, should Gillmore be kept in prison but come up for parole two years from now. The state parole board is expected to make a decision this summer about whether to release Gillmore.

"Whatever lies before us," Tudor said, "we still have each other."

The women hugged before they left the courthouse, but lingered together outside like old friends wanting to catch up some more.

"I'm tired," Kelly admitted, at the end of the day, "but it kind of feels like we've got a natural energy. It's almost like a 'rush.' "